A 54-YEAR-old Loulé woman has been locked up in her parents’ house for 30 years.
The woman has hardly left the house since the late 1970s when her engagement was broken off by the intervention of her parents.
Police are satisfied that the bizarre case does not constitute a crime, although the câmara is evaluating the woman’s situation.
From all indications and evidence the woman’s parents were respected in the neighbourhood – the father being a retired taxi driver.
All attempts to gain access to the woman have so far proved futile and no-one answers the doorbell, although people are heard moving around inside.
One neighbour asked the father about the woman, known as Josefina, about his daughter and got the reply: “She’s happy being in the house.”
The woman’s seclusion began, according to neighbours, 30 years before when the girl had been going out with a boy whom she intended to marry.
The wedding had been fixed, but them was broken off and since that time the girl had become a virtual ghost.
“There are people that have seen her on the veranda feeding cats, but other than that no-one knows anything about their lives,” said another neighbour.
The girl had been training to be a teacher at university around the time that she disappeared behind the walls of the house.
